The Ultimate Field Trip

We our back from what I call The Ultimate Field Trip-nearly three weeks on vacation in Florida!  We drove from our most northern state to the most southern with three kids in an overflowing Yukon! I went armed for the drive with snacks and a few gifts for each child and lots of audio books from our local library.  The drive was wonderful and it was so much fun to see our country from top to bottom.  We drove through or by some of the biggest New England cities, then through the farmlands of Pennsylvania, the Shenandoah Valley, and the Blue Ridge mountains all the way to the Sunshine state.

The first leg of our trip was spent with Josh's family, celebrating his grandfather's 90th birthday.  His parents and sister's family were there too! We stayed at his aunt and uncle's house and got to visit a few state parks in their area.

It was sunny and tropical, almost like we were in a rainforest those first few days.

Josh's cousin has a horse farm and we each got to ride on of her beautiful Arabians.  They said Brown-Eyed-Girl was a natural.

Most of the great-grandkids were able to surround Great-Grampy as he blew out a candle celebrating 90 years.

We got to see the wonderful manatees that flock to the warm waters of Florida at Homossassa Springs State Park. We got a real taste of the Florida wildlife here.

The second leg of our trip was spent in Orlando.  It was our first trip to Disney World.  We spent one day at the Animal Kingdom, one at Epcot, and three at the Magic Kingdom.

Petite loved the rides that were not enclosed.  Dumbo, Aladdin's Magic Carpets, and the Triceratops at the Animal Kingdom were her favorite.

The Magic Kingdom was so beautifully decorated for fall.  Main Street and Cinderella's castle were my favorite sites.

We rented a vacation home for a week, complete with its own pool- fabulous! We would definitely do this again. It was so wonderful having space and being able to make our meals.  I loved that the coffee mugs were oversize so it felt just like home.

When we saw Cinderella's castle, the excitement mounted as we rode the ferry to the Magic Kingdom.  It truly does make you feel like a kid again.

At Epcot, Mister did the Pick-a-Pearl exhibit in Japan. He had been anticipating this for some time!  He chose and oyster and in it was a 7mm pearl.

We made a side trip to Legoland to fulfill Mister's dream.  We were probably one of only a hundred families visiting that day so there were no lines!  That is my kind of trip.

There were so many things made of Legos here!  The pumpkin and otters were only a few of them.  The Mini Village was just amazing, with world landmarks like the capitol building, Eiffel Tower, Las Vegas attractions, and so much more made entirely of Legos. The details were amazing.

The third leg of our trip was spent in Fernandina Beach visiting our best friends who moved here in June.  Now, a trip to the beach is MY favorite kind of vacation. The kids had soooo much fun in the water.

Josh caught nine fish and even this young hammerhead shark! We had a delicious fish fry that night for dinner.

Mister really took to boogie-boarding. He would spend his life in the water if he could.

On the way home we stopped in Hershey, Pennsylvania for the night.  We made a quick trip to Hershey's Chocolate World to see how they make chocolate and pick up a few goodies.

We had so much fun with our friends. The whole trip was full of wonderful moments, we just can't decide on our favorites. We feel so blessed that we were able to take this trip and do so much.  We're back home now, with the woodstove going and packing up all the warm-weather clothes we wore in Florida.  Reality resumes soon but we're thankful for the memories we made.

Weeks 6 and 7- Wicked Good Fun!

So, no pictures from week 6 of our school year.  It was a quiet week with more study of Ancient Egypt and the usual 3 R's.  Week 7 detoured from the lesson plan book and leads up to the Ultimate Field Trip!

 I heard an ad on the radio for a special  Wizard of Oz exhibit celebrating it's 75th anniversary at a (somewhat-not-local) art museum.  But with friends, the hour and a half drive wasn't so bad.

 All the characters were there. Mister refused to have his picture taken with any of them, including the scarecrow, tin man,and lion.

Even the rest rooms were reserved for either the "wicked" or the "good".  You see where I ended up.

I'm so proud of the kids! This was their first visit to an art museum and they did an amazing job.  Yes, it was hard for these tactile learners not to touch, especially when the paint was textured or the sculptures were lifesize.  But it was hard for me too.  We weren't able to take any photographs of what we saw, but favorites from the Oz exhibit were the ruby slippers, Lollipop Guild character costume, the hourglass, and an original screenplay.  The other exhibits were wonderful too.  We saw a few of Andy Warhol's works and lots from Andrew Wyeth and the other two Wyeth artists.   I loved the discussions we had and the kids' comments.  I love that they appreciate art.

The second part of our field trip was visiting a light house that was near the museum.  We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. Honestly, it's been the perfect fall. We didn't even need jackets. We had a picnic lunch and kids collected shells and snails.  They were tickled that some of the snails came out to visit.

To get to the lighthouse, we had to walk down a mile long breakwater.  We saw lobster traps, crabs, and even a sea star on our journey out.  We saw a school of fish when we got to the lighthouse.

On the way back we saw this sea gull eating a sea urchin.  So we considered this a day of Art Appreciation, Marine Biology, and PE.  The best kind of learning is by experience.

Week 5: Fall All Around

I love seeing each week of school pass by in these posts! Five weeks into the year already!  It's funny how I'm always so anxious to start school, but then I love counting down our days too.  I love the feeling of accomplishing something and making progress, I guess.

This week of school wasn't very exciting. We continued our study of Ancient Egypt, primarily pyramids, and I've been reading The Golden Goblet aloud to the kids.  We are all enjoying it, but it is a book we all have to reach for. It's not the easiest for me to read aloud and there is a lot to pay attention to when listening. But they beg for more, so it's worth it!

The real excitement this week was the weekend. On Saturday we attended a fun Harvest Party and on Sunday we went to the corn maze and enjoyed all the other great stuff they had to offer!

Most of the kids at the Harvest Party- complete with costumes, sweet treats, and pizza, plus some really fun games!

Is it any surprise that Miss Petite's costume was Minnie Mouse????

A classic game was rediscovered- bobbing for apples. So much harder than it looks. Believe me, I tried!

And I did it! I got one!

Our group of kiddos at the corn maze. I confess, we didn't make it through. We couldn't find the fourth post no matter how hard we tried.  So we took a short cut and quit. I think part of the fun is getting lost... the kids don't!

All aboard the cow-train!

Rubber ducky races were a hit, as well as the giant jumping pillow (I was jumping too, so no pictures of that).  It was THE perfect fall day.  I even stopped at my favorite apple orchard and bought honeycrisps, fresh homemade donuts, and fresh pressed cider. Any guess what we had for dinner?

That's my quick wrap-up of school week number five. Cause school isn't just in the classroom during the week!

Week 4: Keeping it Real

Being "real" is the new thing, isn't it?  Sharing what it's REALly like in our homes, what we're REALly thinking, what being a wife and mom REALly is. 

It's not perfectly Pinnable layer cakes and kiddy crafts.

It's not GapKids clothing in the sandbox and at the art table.

It's not every hair in place or even sexy bedhead styles paired with cute boots and skinny jeans.

Not in this house, anyway.  Life is REAL here.

So let me be real.  At the start of this week, I was all done. Ready to throw in the towel.  Quit doing one of the only things I know for sure that God has called me to do: homeschool my children.  The reasons why are a whole 'nother blog post, but rest assured, I'm still here, doing it.  Thankful I get to do it, once the bad days have passed and I've gained perspective again.


One of the things I'm learning this year is the flexibility that comes with home educating your children.  I've read all about it and how great it is, but I'm the girl who likes to run on schedules, rules, and charts.  And I'll admit my confidence has waned when it comes to how we're doing academically.  So I tend to want to hit the books and rely on curriculum to determine how well we're doing.  But with Josh's schedule change, I knew that, to make it work, I'd have to be a lot more flexible with our daily schedule.  The schedule is weird, in that it rotates between day and night shifts every three days, but it also affords us a lot more time together as a family.

Part of becoming more flexible means throwing out the things that aren't working for us or the things that don't interest us.  It's substituting better books and eliminating projects.  I've already chucked several elements of our prepackaged curriculum because we're just not interested.  And yet, this doesn't mean we're doing less.  It gives more time for what we do enjoy.  Mister was perusing one of our books on Ancient Egypt and wanted to make this King Tut mask.  I confess, I had zero interest in crafting that day, but because he was so excited about it, why would I say no?  I help him draw it out and size it to fit his head and now he has a cool costume for an upcoming party.

I can so easily get discouraged with a zillion things about home life and education, but seeing my children independently reading and looking at books really does make it all better... for a while.

These are the remains of an uneaten Fluffanutter sandwich and a cup of water with a napkin stuffed inside.  I don't understand why on earth a child wouldn't eat this, especially with the crusts cut off, and I'm sure the intent is not to make me crazy, but it does.

I pray that the Lord will help me see these "messes" as "signs of life" instead :)

One thing I truly dislike doing is searching for coloring pages online.  There are a zillion different results that come up for a Sonic the Hedgehog coloring page search and most of them are junk that don't print well.  But out of love, I spend twenty minutes trying to find a worthy web site and waiting for Brown-Eyed-Girl to choose the ones she likes.

Another keeping-it-real confession: This coffee snob resorted to Folgers a few years ago because coffee is just so darn expensive and we drink so much of it.  I've found their Colombian is pretty good first thing in the morning.  We do still splurge on Starbucks for our afternoon cup or for the French press.

If you haven't heard Andrew Peterson's music, you need to. He's an artist, pure and simple.  His music was a soothing balm to me this week, particularly reminding me that the Lord sees my tears and that the day is coming when they will be wiped away for good and forever.

Favorite words from his song The Reckoning:

And  I know you hear the cries of every soul tonight * You see the teardrops as they roll tonight* Down the faces of the saints who grow weary and faint in Your fields

How long? How long? How long until the curtain is lifted?
How long is this the song that we sing?
How long until the reckoning?

When I am standing in the stillness of the reckoning
The storm is past and rest is beckoning
Mighty God, how I fear you
and I long to be near you, O Lord

And I know that I don't know what I'm asking
I long to look you full in the face
I am ready for The Reckoning.

For the first time in 10 years of motherhood I had a child stick something in her nose that we couldn't get out.  Actually, I was unsure if this little Lego was still in her nose because at first she said it had come out, but then she still complained about it being her nose.  I was ready to take her to the ER the next morning when she came downstairs and handed it to me, saying "It came out."  Well, praise the Lord!

Everybody made a pyramid of some sort.  Petite and I made ours out of popsicle sticks.

We had a few new additions to our school this week:

 First, this $5 desk found at our local thrift store. I've long wanted some desks to prevent tipping in the chairs and to get the kids to sit flat on their butts so they can write better. As you can see from the picture of Mister, that last problem wasn't solved by getting a desk. But they both love it and I've got to find another so they don't fight over it.  Mister even wanted to take it onto the deck to write in his journal.

Another addition is our new foreign language course.  I took French in high school, Josh took Latin, and now we're all going to learn Latin American Spanish.  It is  definitely different than European Spanish, particularly the accent, but I'm catching on quickly and Mister was excited to give this computer based program a shot.

I had more "keepin it real" stuff to share from the week, but for now, that's it. We're on to week 5 now!

Week 3- Apples, Field Trip, Fall is in the Air

 

Fall isn't quite in full swing, but it is surely in the air!  We had some lovely cool, breezy days with lots of sun this past week.  Great days for hanging out on the deck, getting some school work done.  We've been getting our wood in for winter and making apple treats- the first pie of the season and candy apples, too.

We had our first field trip of the year, to a local agricultural fair. Josh got to go with us this year, which the kids, of course, loved.  There is so much to see, but we just can't see it all.  The kids enjoy seeing the animals.  One of the exhibitors had a box full of ribbons her mules and horses had one and was giving them away, so they each got one.

Another highlight for the kids is the hill you can slide down using old cardboard pieces.  Love the smiles!

We saw found a giant piece of cardboard and some of our friends on the hill.

 

 
 

 The girls love the craft tent and made felt bugs this year.

My favorite part of the fair is seeing so many friends.  We meet up with friends from all three of the communities we've lived in, past and present. 

The day was very warm and sunny, so we embraced the shade whenever we could.  We topped our day off with fresh ice cream and a visit to the alpaca farm just outside the fairgrounds.  I kept calling them "llamas" (because  Petite loves the Llama Llama books) and I kept getting corrected by the taxonomy police. This is what happens when you homeschool- you get some smarty pants!

We're just about to begin our study of ancient Egypt. Mister has been impatiently waiting to make the timeline figures out of this book.  He has been making his own moveable figures since he spied this book in our school room.  This is King Narmer (or Menes) the first king of united Egypt.  This book offers two copies of each figure, one in full color, another to color- perfect for my two oldest kiddos.  We've been listening to The Story of the World volume 1 in tandem with our Creation to the Greeks scheduled studies.

 

A rainy weekend is ahead for us.  Just the kind I love!